Evolution of Home Automation-in-a-Box

I went to Best Buy the other day and picked up an Amazon Echo. Carrying that box out of the store, it struck me just how easy home automation has become. With one simple transaction, I can connect a number of smart products in my home with just a few steps.

It wasn’t always that easy.

Ten short years ago, if you wanted home automation it was a huge ordeal – an undertaking for only the very technical or the very wealthy. Most likely, you’d have to work with a specialist or a VAR (Value-Added Reseller) to connect devices in your home.

You’d need a central control unit that was designed for a specific set of products. You’d be limited ONLY to this family of products or everything wouldn’t work together. After some rewiring work, maybe with an electrician and possibly some drywall patching and paint, you’d have some fancy – though still somewhat limited – equipment to use in your home and show off to friends.

Things got a bit better about five years ago. That’s when smart home “hubs” started hitting the market. These made integration easier. You could now connect devices from multiple brands and makers, as long as all were compliant with that specific hub. This widened the playing field quite a bit and made smart home integration available to more people. You didn’t need a VAR or a contractor. With just a little know-how you could do the setup yourself.

Products like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home represent the next step in this evolution. You can walk out of a store carrying a single box and within that box, is a device that is already capable of working with numerous devices, with little-to-no integration work required. This opens home automation to a whole new group of consumers, and effectively democratizes the smart home experience.

The process has become so much more turnkey over the last decade. And it’s only getting easier with each passing year. These are very exciting times for both smart home enthusiasts and anyone just starting to wade into the waters.

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About Olibra

Olibra develops technologies designed to connect traditional household devices – like ceiling fans, air conditioners, and garage doors – to the smart home. Our flagship product, the Bond, is the first to connect both RF and IR remote-controlled devices, and it is fully compatible with voice-activated smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home.